Selective call systems are characterized by the transmission of data to one or more selective call receivers which respond by sensibly alerting and presenting data to the user. Each selective call receiver has one or more unique address codes, hereafter referred to as an address, assigned to identify a specific selective call receiver. When an address is transmitted via a modulated signal, the selective call receiver decodes the address. If the address matches a predetermined address associated with the selective call receiver, a sensible alert is activated and data associated with the address is presented to the user. In the case where the address does not match a predetermined address associated with the selective call receiver, the selective call receiver ignores the data associated with the address and begins searching for the next transmitted address. In order to receive more than one message using the aforementioned selective call coding format, multiple transmissions, each including an address, data, and other system overhead, must be sent by the transmitter, thus consuming system time and decreasing the overall efficiency.
There is a limitation to the number of functions which can be represented by each address. For example, separate addresses are required for numeric, alphanumeric, tone only, and tone and voice functions in previously known selective call receivers. Further restrictions are imposed in current systems by the automatic placement of new information in the next available information storage memory, hereafter referred to as a slot, as determined by the receiving device, destroying the existing contents of the slot.
Thus, what is needed is a method for, with a single transmission, sending information comprised of a single selective call address and one or more identification packets related to one or more messages, receiving the single transmission and selecting a selective call receiver, parsing one or more identification packets from the information, and determining the slot and storage mode for each message in response to said identification packets.